Abstract
We have perhaps not reflected enough on the peculiarities of British political history between the two world wars. It was the first period of mass democracy — almost so in 1918 when all men got the vote at age 21 and women at 30, if they were local government electors (i.e. tenants or owners of property and paying local rates) or wives of electors. Full democracy came in 1928 when all women were enfranchised at age 21. The electorate tripled in 1918 from 7.6 million to 21.7 million and rose to 28.8 million in 1928 — a major transformation unprecedented in Britain. It was also the one period of the twentieth century when the party political system was peculiarly weak. Later in the century it was assumed as the norm that Westminster politics consisted of two big parties fighting it out, taking turns to govern, with a third party and some very minor parties trailing behind. There were one-party, majority governments for only seven years between the wars, 1922—late 1923 and 1924-29, both Conservative governments. There were minority Labour governments in 1924 (for a little over nine months) and 1929-31. The Coalition government of 1918–22 was Conservative dominated, though with a Liberal prime Minister, Lloyd George, as was the National Government from 1931, especially from 1935, this time with a ‘National Labour’ leader, Ramsay MacDonald, from 1931 to 1935, and Conservatives, Stanley Baldwin, then Neville Chamberlain, from 1935 to 1940.
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Notes
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Thane, P. (2013). The Impact of Mass Democracy on British Political Culture, 1918–1939. In: Gottlieb, J.V., Toye, R. (eds) The Aftermath of Suffrage. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333001_4
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